The Opposite of Regret
by The Crushinator
Summary: Mothers' meditations on the nature of sacrifice. Kya and Ursa POV.
1. Kya

**Disclaimer:** All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

Some dialogue quoted from "The Southern Raiders," a third season episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender.

* * *

**Chapter 1 - Kya**

Last night, I dreamt of birds. My mother told me that when you dream of birds in great numbers, a great snowfall is coming, one big enough to bury the village so deep that even the waterbenders wouldn't be able to dig us free. I never really believed in waterbenders, though. By the time my mother reached her twentieth summer, they were all gone. _Anerneq._ Ghosts. Until Katara, I didn't really believe there were any left in the world.

My Katara. My beautiful girl.

Every morning, my girl and I get breakfast ready together. She can't bend very well yet, but she loves stirring the sea prunes without using a ladle. She used to try to bend the stew into bowls, but after she spilled stew on her father's boots one too many times, I gave her a bowl to practice with and told her to play by the sea until she got it right. She forgets most days. She's still a child, after all. When the cleaning is done, she goes to play with her brother, and I watch her, I make sure that she doesn't stray too far, make sure that she doesn't use her bending to shift the snow under her brother's feet when he teases her. I'm trying to raise her to be careful with her bending. Sometimes, though, there's a bent to her nature like fire, and the ice cracks behind her gesturing arms.

The shaman doesn't like her. I don't know why, because she's a gift to us, a gift from La, the future of the Southern Water Tribe. The Fire Nation took all our benders away from us, and it's taken over sixty years for them to return. He should be overjoyed. Before she was born, he told me, he dreamed of a departing ship with a wolf on the prow. Famine and death. When he sees her, he looks to the horizon and makes the sign of the closed door.

We pay attention to our dreams in the Water Tribe. A person who doesn't follow his dreams cannot become successful. When I was a girl, my father would dream of the sea so swollen at high tide that it was level with the land, and when he woke he knew that it would be a good time for tiger seals. When the sea overcame the land in a flood, it was polar leopards, and the tribe would eat well until the sea took back his bounty and receded. My father was an accomplished hunter who listened to his dreams. He was never wrong.

In my dream, a great flock of black birds flew so thick that they covered the sky. I had never seen so many birds, not even when the season turns and the blue gulls and arctic screamers return to us from the North. Then they disappeared, leaving Tui's scarred face covered in blood.

When I woke, even my husband hadn't risen for the morning hunt. I stood and checked on my children, and they too still slept, cuddled together like twin polar bear dogs. When I pushed back the tarp over the entrance to our home, my eyes expected to see the sky black and the moon red. But the meat still hung, and the wind still blew, and the ocean still sparkled in the pre-dawn glow.

I can hear what I dreamed of now. But then, all I could hear was the sea and the breath of my family. If I had known what the birds were telling me in my dream I would have taken them and run, run past the boundaries of the village, over the ice wall, and into the mountains at the heart of the pole. We could have hidden there until the ships left, until their thick black smoke became consumed by the snow. I'd have done anything to keep them safe.

But I didn't listen.

* * *

The blizzard comes when my children are playing by the sea. It falls like black feathers, and stains where it touches. I see a flame pass by my window out of the corner of my eye. I move to stand up, but an armored man thrusts his way through the skins hanging over my door. I see him, and I see the insignia on his uniform, and I understand the meaning of my dream.

"Where is the last waterbender?" he says.

My blood runs hot. I hear screaming. "You took them all. There are no waterbenders left in the Southern Tribe."

He smiles, and it's colder than the sea. "My sources indicate that there is one we missed. It's the reason we're here. You, the chief's wife, are in a position well suited to know who he is and where he is hiding. We would ask your husband, but he's otherwise occupied."

I shake my head. "No," I say, "It's like I said, there aren't any left. Please, let me go, my husband is out there. My children are out there. Please, there's no reason for you to do this."

"I assure you, the reasons are there. Now tell me the truth."

He steps toward me, and I stiffen, praying hard to whatever spirit is listening, when my daughter rushes in, the moon symbol on her parka plainly visible. Does he know? Can he know what that means? Will he take her right now, before I can get to her?

"Mom!" she shouts, and it is a moment before she sees the monster in front of her.

I can see him looking over his shoulder, his shrewd eyes narrowing as they pass over her. If he knew, he would have taken her by now.

"Just let her go and I'll give you the information you want," I find myself saying.

The man grunts. "You heard your mother. Get out of here!"

"Mom," she whispers, and her voice trembles. "I'm scared."

"Go find your dad, sweetie. I'll handle this."

She stares at me for a moment, and I am certain that she will disobey me. So I smile at her. Behind that smile I put every piece of resolve I have left inside me. I have to show her that everything will be okay. Even though I know for sure it will not. She nods, gives me one last, terrified look, and runs to find Hakoda. It will keep her busy. I know her father is fighting off the invaders. It will take a long time for her to find him. Long enough.

"Now tell me. Who is it? Who's the waterbender?"

"There are no waterbenders here," I repeat, desperate now. "The Fire Nation took them all away a long time ago."

"You're lying," he says, and the steel in his voice is soft and sharp. "My source says there's one waterbender left in the Southern Water Tribe. We're not leaving until we find the waterbender."

"If I tell you... do you promise to leave the rest of the village alone?"

He pauses, considering. Then, like Fate deciding to drown her son the sea, he nods.

"It's me. Take me as your prisoner."

"I'm afraid I'm not taking prisoners today," he growls, and the smile on his face is not like a knife, but an approaching ship, and every beam of it is on fire.

The second between his smile and my death stretches like soft seal skin. I can see my husband, Hakoda, tall and proud, his usually smiling face contorted in fury as he fights with a masked Fire Nation soldier. I can see my son, Sokka, grabbing a falling boomerang and throwing it at the attackers, though he is only as tall as the metal barbs on their knees. And I can see my daughter running across the snow. I can see my necklace shining against her skin. I can see her sweeping the hearth, tears falling down her face and splashing on the dirt. Every morning she forces her brother to get out of bed. She hugs her father as he stares blankly out at the falling snow, and asks him to find food, because it's all gone. There's ash on her face. I want to wipe it off her, but the bubble of my spirit has separated from my body. The dead cannot touch the living. We can only watch.

I do not regret what I have done. When I was a little girl, I dreamt of the moon as she walked across the frozen sky. I dreamt that a hunter shot her, and that the arrow flew up and up and up. I knew she was going to die. But then I became a cloud. I took the arrow into my body. Then I died.

I can see the shaman's face surrounded by smoke, the animal skins on his shoulders covered with a thin film of ash. He does not smile. He never smiles. But he takes my hand in his, and he says that he was wrong.

Every part of me hurts. He says it will be over soon, and I cough and ask when. He reaches into my heart, closes my eyes, and whispers, "Now."

I do not wake from the dream.


	2. Ursa

Chapter 2 - Ursa

Life in the court of the Fire Nation is elegant, cultured, exciting, and intoxicating. It is also quite deadly. This is the lesson my mother taught me when the Second Prince asked me to become his wife. Though I was a nobleman's daughter and the grand-daughter of Avatar Roku, I had not spent much time in the court, because my father wanted to protect me from that way of life. The petty alliances, the intrigue, the shallow courtesans and their equally vapid lovers were deemed as a bad influence on my education. Partly, they were correct. In growing up away from all that I was able to live my life without the desire to advance my position through underhanded means. They taught me that all the honor one sought in life could be found within oneself (as my father joked that getting some bestowed from the Fire Lord couldn't hurt). But in sheltering me from this, they left me unprepared to deal with the lengths people will go to in order to gain a little power.

Unfounded rumors. Accusations of disloyalty. Affairs. Blackmail. Poison. The deaths that have budded in the court since Lu Ten was killed in battle are about to blossom. I wish I could be there to protect my children when the flower finally fruits.

Ever since Ozai and I became parents, I have tried my best to shelter our children from the darker side of court life, but growing up in the center of the Fire Nation has taught them everything that my childhood did not. Now one is eager for control, one wary but enthusiastic. I love my children, though I cannot understand that part of their natures. My father always told me that ones who seek power are not fit to rule, that the truly great have power thrust upon them. I can see him now, sipping palm wine before the fire, his feet up on the table in one of the rare moments that mother wasn't around to tell him off for it, praising the Fire Lord for his wise choice in wife for his son.

He died soon after, and within days my mother followed. I like to think that it was natural causes; my parents had me late in life, after nearly two decades of trying to conceive, and they were very near their time.

But.

As I said, people in the court will do anything for a little advancement. And Nobleman Wu had his eyes on my family's estate for a very long time.

There's no use thinking about it.

I love my country. I love my husband, though he frightens me sometimes. I love my children, my sweet, well-meaning son, my talented, courageous girl. Though, like her father, there's something in her that makes me shrink back in fear. I don't blame them; all they've ever known is treachery, control, and the thirst for power. Ambitious and intelligent Ozai against the favored Iroh, clever and talented Azula against her earnest brother Zuko. Fire Lord Azulon against the resisting world.

They say that people hungry for power are capable of many things. Until tonight, I never knew the depth of that statement.

We received word this morning that Iroh's son and third in line for the throne, my nephew Lu Ten, was killed in battle at Ba Sing Se. Iroh has withdrawn his troops, though they have already cracked the outer wall of the untouchable city, a feat which no other person in any nation's history can claim to have accomplished. My heart as well as his have been broken today. His for his son, and mine...

Lu Ten is dead, and something is happening. I can see it in my husband's eyes surely as Sozin's Comet approaches. And his eyes are on the throne. He tells me he is going to secure our family's future; I am not so certain.

My name derives from the roots of our language, an ancient word meaning "she bear." All my life I have disliked my appellation, for it puts one in mind of a great lumbering beast, fierce and not at all elegant, as I have striven to be since I was very small. Now, however... now I wonder what my mother knew when she named me.

I will protect my children. They will not be sacrifices on the stairs of my husband's ambition. They will not be thrown into fire at the behest of a king. And they will not serve as reminders of the price of disloyalty.

I will do what I must.


End file.
